Ask Rezzz

Let me explain the difference here. When a client comes to me asking for a new design for their ecommerce store, that’s a want.

It’s now my job as the professional to get to the bottom of why they feel they want a redesign. I do this by using the 5 Whys technique. You’ve no doubt heard me or someone else talk about this conversational method where you continue to ask questions of someone until you actually get down to the root cause of their problem.

You will feel a bit awkward at first performing this. But as you continue to do this anytime a request comes across your desk, you’ll get better and better at it. 

The next step is creating a no-brainer price around the solution to their project.

Remember that price is a subjective. It’s an arbitrary number that someone puts on a product or service. From your POV, the price should be higher than that of the client. From their POV, they would want it as low as possible.

By unpacking what the real need of the project is in step 1, we can close this gap by putting some real numbers to it and show the potential ROI of the project.

In this episode I walk you through a real case of mine with actual numbers. 

You'll be able to take what you hear in this show and apply it to your very next lead.

In episode 50, 57, 60 I touch a bit about pricing your services and what to look for from both a starting point and where you want to get to point. In episode 12, I dive a little deeper into the topic where I was asked “how do I talk to a lead about a one-off project and turn them into a recurring services client?”  

But I want to share today the exact process I go through in order to put a value on my service so that the price I present is a no-brainer for a lead to jump on board and become a client.

Value pricing is much harder to do, and I think that’s why a lot of you if you are starting out default to hourly. There’s definitely nothing wrong with that either, but at some point you’ll want to stop trading your time for money.

It’s a difficult thing to do because of 3 things:

• you need to understand your clients
• have the confidence to ask tough questions
• pin the value of your services against a dollar amount

All of these things are not easy to come by. Especially #2 — difficult conversations, and that’s what talking about budgets and rates can be for you. 

It was for me for a long time. I didn’t like the perceived confrontation. I wasn’t comfortable asking the questions I needed to ask in order to really understand their business.

Until I realized that...

After looking into what "free lance" comes from, what it's true meaning is, I embraced the term and I hope this episode will help you as well.

To be a successful freelancer and have a successful freelancing business, you need:

1. To have focus and driven to do the best work possible
2. Highly communicative
3. Charge what you are worth
4. Know who you serve
5. Know the very big problem that you solve for them
6. Have the discipline to stay on task
7. Focus on your own business as if it were a client of yours

These 7 things are absolute musts, non-negiotiable.

With these 7 characteristics you will stand head and shoulders above the crowd.

Because of them, you can embrace the term “freelance” and know that you aren’t just a hire hand or a mercenary. 

You do what you do to help grow your client’s businesses. You are passionate about the “thing” you are putting into the world because you know that it can help make difference, not just in your client’s eyes, but their customers’ eyes and ultimately your own.

By becoming that partner with your clients, you can design a life, the life you want, through freelance.

That is freelance!

Most of the advice is learn as many different languages as you can. Build up your portfolio. Get out and do local networking. Get on job boards.

I’ll did all these things and what it landed me was smack dab in the middle of generalist-ville and back to sitting in a cube full-time. 

It’s no wonder why so many freelancers are always stuck in the feast or famine cycle with this sort of advice still out there.

Here are the 5 things I dive into in this episode:

• Talk with your existing network and probe for projects to work on
• Start figuring out a niche
• Get yourself organized
• Charge what your worth
• Ask for referrals

When you niche down, you become an expert, unique, and everyone knows exactly what is it that you do. They actually listen to you and respect the experience and expertise you have.

You may get less leads into your business, but when you niche down and the leads know exactly what they are getting from you.

Because of this, they are more qualified because they already have a problem that they understand you can solve for them. 

As a generalist, they will look at you as a jack of all trades. People who are generalists often have to compete with other generalists on price.

When you are the expert, you can set your own price. Because you can set your own price and can prove with past results you’ve gotten with other clients, the leads will know the results without having to ask you. They respect those results, trust you because of the results you have received for previous clients and will pay for those same results.

My answer to this question isn’t a simple one. But I share with you my experiences as an example in this episode. 

This is something that needs to be put out there more in this man’s opinion.

4 suggestions that have helped me are:

1. Find people that you can talk with every day - inside + outside of your family and friends. You need to talk with folks on both sides of your life, the professional and personal.

2. Take mental breaks throughout the day. Go for a walk. Play with your kids. Even just sit outside on your front porch. Whatever it is that you can do to give your brain a rest.

3. Go on vacation! Can’t stress (no pun intended) this enough. When you get an extended break, your brain does this reshuffle of priorities without you even knowing it. So that when you come back, you are re-energized and re-focused to do some awesome work.

4. Take mental health days. Or even half days. You are building a business of your own, why not take advantage of that once in a while and allow yourself to not work. The other morning I knew I had to get up at 5:30a as I always do. But I literally said to myself, I’m tired, TJ is sleeping well this morning, and so I’m going to sleep in. My wife rolled over at 6:50 and said, you know it’s almost 7 right? I simply replied, yup and slept in until 7:30a.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a bunch of stuff to do. But I just wasn’t feeling it that morning and so I gave my brain a break rather than force it and potentially make the entire day a lost day, or worse.

There are some awesome communities, like WP Elevation who talk openly about mental health.

I think we all, as humans, need to be more aware of where the health of our minds are. We are always so conscious of our weight or the foods we eat, but if our heads aren’t health, the rest of the body won’t be either.

If a lead or client say something to the effect of “Well I need Option A, but is there any way to get that price lower or closer to Option B?” Holding true to what the offers are I simply and politely say “no”.

A few things may happen from this:

1. They will see that I’ve thought through their project and know the solution that will get them results for their budget
2. They’ll see that because I’m not wavering on price, that may I’m a little bit different than the vast majority of freelancers and consultants out there.
3. They may just walk away. Which for me is ok.

Not negotiating on price doesn’t mean that I’m not flexible. It just means that when I put a number of a scope of work, that’s a true value number.

The final thing I’d like to talk about on this topic is that if you present a proposal, you want to position your price to the value the client would get from the project. 

You do this by figuring out during the sales process what the project ultimately means to them. Is it a time saver? Is it something to bring in more customers? Is it something to keep current customers longer?

If you can position your price against that of the value of the solution to their problem and make it a clear no brainer, they won’t even ask about a lower price.

Being a freelancer you need to be putting content out there so that you can start building upon that reputation. As my friend and virtual mentor, Chris Ducker says, "You need to build influence, and by building influence you are seen as trustworthy and get the job done."

I have article on my site that potential clients have found through search. They had the question answered in some form or another and then those prospects reached out to me for additional work, or just to do the thing that my article is saying.

The other piece of content that has helped is content that I’ve written or talked about on the podcasts about things that I do for my processes.

Clients have told me that by hearing how I organize things, how structure projects and my days, and how I just run my business has shown professionalism that most don’t. Those are their words, not mine.

I consider the content helpful for positioning and sales, I don’t think that I had any piece of content that’s directly converted someone to become a client of mine. Mainly because I don’t have buy now buttons on articles.

Bottom line here is that content helps you sell. It helps you position yourself. It helps you stand out. You should be thinking about your content in a way that is helpful first, then acquisition second. Use your content as an awareness tool, and use your sales process as the converting tool.

Service based consultants won’t convert someone to buy their premium priced packages from one article. But one article can make a reader recognize you and your business and see your business as a resource to buy from later on.

You to get a gauge on what my value in the market was. There’s no way to do that if you aren’t getting paid. Having someone tell me “let’s do this project and then if it goes well, I’ll have more work for you” never showed me that the person valued the work I was doing.

There may be certain circumstances where you need to take on spec work. Say for example you are a designer and looking to branch off into an industry that you have never worked in before. If you don’t have a other clients to show work, it may be hard to land a client.

Or if you are totally learning a new skill and want to offer services using that skill. Doing spec work will help you learn and get you that real world experience too.

Make sure to get sign off from that client for you to be able to use them in your portfolio?

As an alternative to spec work, try scaling back work.

Let’s assume you are starting anew and that’s why you are looking to work for free. Instead of doing the whole project, why not scale back and do a small, more manageable, less riskier piece of the project.

That’s really what’s at play in all this. Risk. 

The client wants to keep the price as low as possible, sure. But they want the price as low as possible to minimize their risk of potentially the work not getting done.

You get the real-world experience and learned skill. Plus, the scaled back timeframe allows you to get more initial pieces into your portfolio even faster.

If you are starting out, don’t just assume that you have to do work for free. Don’t be enticed by the “I’ll give you more work after this project is done” promise.

Think about what you can do that’s smaller, but still get you the learned skill you desire and build up a bit of a portfolio quicker so you can get to being respected for the value you are bringing to your clients’ businesses. 

Today I dive a bit into my personal life that I haven't done before.

So have a listen and see if you can relate.

The main thing though is you want to make sure that you surround yourself with supportive people. Not necessarily supportive of your choice, but support you. 

What I mean by that is, to this day, my Mom still doesn’t really understand what I do, but she is proud of the life and happy if I’m happy. My friends may question some of my decisions I choose around doing or not doing something work related, but they know that I always manage to figure out a way.

If you surround yourself with doubters or people who will judge you constantly, then they will inevitably start to rub off on you and you’ll start to doubt yourself. These people are detractors.

If your family are detractors, then take what they say as concern for your well-being and security and their own fears of the unknown. It doesn’t mean that they don’t support you, it’s just that they may not see down the same path as you. 

It’s family, remember that.

Instead I encourage you to surround yourself with folks who may challenge you, play a bit of a devil’s advocate if you will. 

Find your own path, don’t be shy about telling someone about you freelancing. Let them think what they think and leave it at that. 

There’s really no better time than now to plant your flag in the freelance space.